When I did my first ebook, I did no marketing past telling some people about it on WhatsApp. To be fair, it actually worked out alright, but my most recent ebook (which I didn’t promote) completely flopped. It has less than ten sales on KDP right now, after a couple of months.
Now I have finally learned the importance of marketing. So I did some research, and combined it with my knowledge to create this. Here’s my quick answer:
The best way to market an ebook is social media. Email lists, guest blogs, creating your own affiliate program, influencer outreach, promotions, word-of-mouth, paid ads and podcast appearances are also all good ways of promoting an ebook.
Why is marketing ebooks important?
Marketing is possibly the most important part to selling ebooks. This is the component of the plan that you should spend the most time on, as it is the part that will get your traffic to your book. It is the part that will get people interested in your book, plus it generates more attention for your title. If you want to know how much money ebooks can earn, that’s here.
Most people overlook marketing, including me at the beginning (so don’t feel bad if you did too), which gives you a big advantage. If nobody else is using it, you get to develop a lead. It’s up to you if you are going to use this powerful (yet frustrating at times!) tool.
Here are the top 10 best ways to get your book into as many reader’s hands:
1. Social media
Social media is your greatest ally in the marketing battle. It allows you to reach nearly unlimited people in the space of a few days if you know what you are doing. But if you don’t know what to do, it can become a thorn in the side, sucking precious time out of you with no results.
If you’ve already got a following, don’t be scared to tap into it! If you don’t, then you should try and build one up before you finish your ebook. If you already have a finished book, then maybe you should try influencer outreach (below).
One of the benefits of social media marketing is how easy it is to grow a community around your ebook. You should try and respond to comments, because a commenter is obviously interested!
On some platforms, such as TikTok, you probably don’t even need a large following as long as you can make a killer video. One video can make or break your book, so get to work! Here’s some quick tips on how to make an entertaining video:
- Have a hook both visually and audibly within the first second of the video.
- Record everything, particularly audio, using high-quality equipment.
- Add another hook every 2-3 seconds.
- Make the script interesting.
- Edit it well. Think: would you watch this?
- Ask someone critical how to improve it and if they would watch it.
2. Email lists
If you have an email list, then you essentially have a list of people who would potentially be interested, plus their contact details. If you are not using that, then you’d better have a good excuse!
When making your email, try to start with the benefit they will receive from your ebook. For example, if it were a book about how to learn ukelele, then you might start with “Never Drive to Another Ukelele Lesson Again!” as your tagline. Be creative!
If you want to make an email list, then your best option is to either add a link to your socials to sign up for it, or create a website to do it. But if you are making a website, then it is probably just best to sell your ebook through it. Here’s a tip: add a reason why they should sign up for your email, such as “10 percent off!”
3. Guest blog posts
Most established blog websites produce content on a weekly, bi-weekly, or even daily, basis. You can take some of the weight off their shoulders and promote your own ebook by offering free guest blog posts. The only downside is that you really need to know how to make a good post. Here’s a few tips:
- Write it yourself. In the age of AI, it’s far too easy to produce bad content without realising it. AI can only rewrite existing content, so you need to actually write it yourself. You can use it to help, but it will need heavy editing.
- Add your own experience, facts and your opinion. I think this really helps to make the content seem more authentic and human in the age of AI.
3.Make sure it answers a question. You can’t just write about what you want. It should be something that people will search. - Make sure it is at least 1500-2000 words.
After you have done these and finished the post, you can try and add in your own links, either in a place that would be helpful to the reader or at the end if you cannot find anywhere else.
The benefit to writing blog posts is that they are likely to easily get into the Google rankings quickly, bringing in thousands of people every month. That’s good for the blog, but even better for you, because that’s probably at least a hundred per year per article.
4. Affiliate promotion
If you are publishing the ebook on your own website, possibly the best thing you can do to boost sales is to create an affiliate program. This is where a YouTube channel, TikTok account or website uses a special link pointing towards your ebook’s page. This special link means that you can trace it back to them automatically.
Every time that you make a sale, they receive a percentage of the profit. Since there is no costs to selling ebooks, you can give them a huge percentage – say, 90%. Although you may make less per sale, you should be able to recoup that cost quite quickly if your campaign is successful. You are essentially getting a huge army of influencers, blogs and promotional services with no upfront cost.
The only other thing that you have to do to get this traffic going is to promote influencers to your signup page. This is not too difficult with blogs, as there are almost always contact details in the footer, but for influencers it can be a little tougher. Make sure to mention your incredible percentage, and try to make it so you can pay them in their currency.
There are plenty of WordPress plugins that can do this for your website, but if you are planning to sell on Amazon, this probably won’t work. You’d have to use a service like ClickBank, but it won’t be as simple and easy.
It is often a good idea to promote your affiliate program a little before launch, as that way you can get a lot of people promoting your ebook just as it launches, which can skyrocket the sales. If you are doing a good book launch (below), then they can also promote the sale you are doing.
5. Promotional sales
This is a simple one. It will need more marketing to promote the sale, but your marketing is more successful if a sale is on. Simply lower your prices for a short time. This is easy to do both if you are selling on Amazon or on your own website. Here’s how to do them:
- Amazon KDP. Log in to your KDP account, head over to Marketing, and run either a free book promotion, where the ebook is completely free for the selected time (and gets featured in the free section where there is much less competition), or a countdown deal, which allows you to control the price each day (which also gives it a more appealing deal in the lists). You get a limit of 5 days in every 90-day period for either of these. As of the time of writing, you cannot have a combination of the two in a 90-day period. Amazon will do a bit of promotion for you, but I recommend promoting it yourself as well.
- Your site. Simply navigate to your sales page, add a cross element either over or in your text price to make it look like it is crossed out, and add a new price. Set this to your charging price, and work on promoting your page.
6. Word of mouth
This sounds impossible to do, but if you think about it, you can try to increase it. For example, you could put at the end of your book: “Enjoyed? Please share [your ebook’s listing page]!” It’s a little bit like sharing a social media post.
This is an incredibly powerful tool, as it can become exponential if done very well. However, if done wrong, it can become a bit of a turnoff for your readers. Lucky for you, people who are prompted to share something usually do it twice as much (on average)!
7. Paid advertising
On Amazon, this is very easy to do. It costs about £1, or a little less per click, so it can be difficult to make it back. The only way I would recommend doing this is if you have an incredibly long, helpful and sought-after ebook. That way you can price it at about £9.99 and there is a chance you will make money.
For both a website or Amazon, another option is Google ads. These are both CPC (cost per click) and CPV (cost per view). Again, it can be difficult to make money from these, but there are other options, such as Facebook ads, or if your book is more important locally you could try posters and ads on buses.
Generally, I do not recommend paid ads as they can be costly with no results if you don’t have a lot of experience.
8. Podcast appearances
Appearing on a podcast is a great way to promote your book. You can often find many small-to-medium sized podcasts that could be happy to interview you. These podcasts usually have hundreds up to thousands of listeners, but the listeners they do have are normally quite devoted.
If you can find a podcast willing, you will want to appear in their notes or descriptions, ideally with a link.
When emailing podcasts, you should focus on the value you can bring to their listeners and them. Do mention what you want, but keep it short. Make sure it reads through as friendly, because if you sound demanding or as if you are begging you will most likely get turned away – not what you want!
9. Influencer outreach
In a similar vein to podcasts, try to rope in a few influencers. These could be on any platform, and again, it is better to find ones with smaller followings. Usually you will have to pay them a little, as you are a sponsor, but if they do a good job, it can work very well.
Usually, you can look at the video or image before they publish it to check that it is all good. Make sure you ask for this in the email that you send them. You may have to send them a free copy of your ebook for them to look through before they agree, so make sure, again, that your content is good!
The benefit of asking smaller influencers is that they receive less offers and so are more likely to accept yours, even if you offer a bit less than they would like.
10. Book launches
Usually a good book launch combines a lot of different techniques (above) to generate a lot of hype when you publish your book. The benefit of using a book launch, particularly on Amazon, is that you will get to the top of the rankings quickly. This is a self-perpetuating cycle, as the higher you are in the rankings, the longer you are likely to stay there, because of reviews.
Book launches need to have a sale – normally I make my book free for the first few days – because your aim is not to make money, it’s to shift copies. Shifting copies at the start means you will sell more in the long run as well.
You should send emails using your email list, which hopefully you already built. You should promote your affiliate program a little before launch, for the reasons above. Ideally, you do the same with influencers, as that way they can all promote your sale on launch day.
Mistakes to avoid and tips on success
- Try not to sound too salesy when you are promoting your book – at the moment, they don’t care! Present it as if you were talking about it with a friend.
- Focus on providing value to the reader/listener/watcher and create a bond with them before telling them about your book.
- Keep your friends and family interested and up to date – if any of them can help you, you will really want the help. Doing it all by yourself is nearly impossible.
- Make sure your Amazon page or website sales page is as good as possible. Carefully craft your description and particularly your cover.
- Make sure you are selling in the right place. For a guide on that, go here.
- Don’t be worried if something doesn’t work out! You’re still learning!
Thanks for reading this post. If it was helpful, there’s a ton more information here at my blog!